


King's Effigy

by NekoAisu



Series: VERs [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ardyn Izunia Being An Asshole, Childhood Friends, Clones, Episode Prompto Spoilers, Gen, Give Prompto a Good Childhood, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Magic, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, dad cor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-05-07 05:42:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14664480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NekoAisu/pseuds/NekoAisu
Summary: Cor Leonis is not someone easily swayed. He stands by his King, fights for his King, and would throw away his life for his King. His loyalty is not to be won, only given to those he deems not so infernally stupid.It's not to be dumped on one stupid test-tube baby he stole from a lab because he's always been impulsive and rash with his decisions. That one slip leads to a myriad others, another stolen child (a Niff experiment who has more personality flaws than the Emperor of Niflheim himself), and the need for a larger apartment.He's struggling more with learning how to parent than he had against the Blademaster, but he can't run away from the trial of raising kids.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This AU is super self-indulgent and probably a bit disjointed, so if you find any mistakes or areas that are unclear, please let me know! I'm pretty new to this fandom, so it would be great to hear from more experienced fans on how I'm doing!
> 
> Thank you for giving this a try <3

Bright lights cast everything in shades of bluish white. It washed out Cor’s skin and made him look long dead, rather than alive and increasingly pissed off. He’d been creeping through the halls of a bunker he’d swear was a miniature labyrinth for the better part of three hours, fighting when need be and slipping past when it could be avoided.

He ignored the echoing snarls of daemons further down the hall and continued past them, scanning a keycard he’s stolen from a staff member three floors up. He had a mission to carry out and no level of opposition could dare put a stop to it. The door slid open with a hiss and he was hit all at once by a sight he never expected in the midst of an Imperial research facility.

The halls had all been clinically clean- not a file out of place, floors perfectly shiny, and all areas heavy with the odor of industrial strength disinfectant. What he had expected to be another lab, or at least an office, was instead a room full of wires and tubes. The whole area smelled strange, almost perfumed, but it was just faint enough to be nigh untraceable. Set in a circle around the center of the room were six tanks- each half metal, half acrylic, and filled with something Cor wasn’t sure was water, or some sort of hyper-oxygenated solution made for fluid breathing -each bearing a subject.

He strode over to them, stepping over the bundles of cabling kept together by steel bands and meticulously placed sections of duct tape. Standing dead center between each of the tanks felt almost surreal. Six perfectly identical people floated, encapsulated in blue. They were all humanoid, at least, with dull red hair and a facial profile that reminded him of the Founder King’s tapestry in the Hall of Portraits. He chose to ignore the fact that they were all children, instead checking for documentation of what these people- clones? -were supposed to be. He never once let his hand stray from the hilt of his sword.

The first thing he finds is a stack of carefully filled out forms. They’re not unlike the ones he’d come across in the last laboratory raid when they’d stolen Bethisia’s newest MT project, pointing to another case of genetic replication for the sake of daemonification research. It doesn’t tell him anything of note other than vitals and exactly how many subjects had come before. He does not wince when the numbers make themselves known, spanning far into the hundreds for this project alone, and instead continues leafing through what was left. What the papers do state, in all their incriminating glory, was that the same-faced six were made from the Chancellor’s own DNA. Cor quickly dismisses the papers to Regis’s Armiger and searches for more. He takes pictures of each tank and every monitor until the door beeps twice.

It opens with the same _hiss-click_ as it had for him, this time staying open long enough for a gaunt faced scientist and his Magitek guards to trundle inside. The MTs stay positioned by the door, LED eyes bright with the promise of violence. Cor waits, sheltered by the forest of beeping monitors and cabling, until he hears the man say, “Oh. Well, that’s not good. MX-07198, dispose of it.” Then, he’s moving.

He peers between gaps carefully, not really fearing the MTs, or their master, using a pin camera to record the man pressing a series of buttons along a side panel of one of the tanks. There’s no sound, but a bright light, instead. It’s there for barely a second before the fluid begins to drain out through a previously empty tube. The acrylic front panel slides upward with a long whirring noise and it’s with no delicacy that the subject is yanked from the chamber. They’re tossed aside onto the floor with a wet _thunk._

The air becomes steadily more humid as the tank is left to air out. The child does not move. The MT ordered previously steps forward and drags what Cor knows for a fact is a dead body out of the room.

He’s no stranger to Niflheim’s cruelty, but seeing it performed on children firsthand was too much even for a war veteran. The scientist steps over to the next pod and sighs. “Again. MX-10759, dispose of this one, too.”

The same pattern follows. The same flash of light. Another one dead.

The third is passed over with a pleased hum. The fourth is killed. Followed by the fifth. The sixth is different.

“How curious,” the man coos at them, “that you’re showing signs of magic capability. Well, no need for I798.” He strides over to the third tank again and presses the now-familiar pattern. He’s humming a tune and grinning like he’s won the war singlehandedly and not just murdered children without remorse. “Time for acce- _ugh!”_

Cor is already darting forward before he truly knows he is, sword drawn and sheathed in record time as it carves cleanly through the scientist’s torso. He dispatches the remaining MTs with his regular efficiency before trying to remember the pattern for draining water from the last remaining holding chamber.

He can’t afford to slip up and cause a casualty, but he’s not going to wait around forever, either. He pulls a flask from the Armiger and smashes it over the panel, hoping that a mid-level fire spell would do the trick and at least disarm the thing.

What happens, instead, is that an alarm begins blaring. MT units pour in from the doorway and he lobs another flask at them, the telltale chill of ice knocking them all back and freezing many a mechanical joint solid. He takes the opportunity to pry at the warped seam where fluid had already begun to leak out, slicing through cabling and narrowly avoiding chopping chunks of hair off along with it soon as the panel is open. He pulls the child to his chest just as the MTs begin to come back to life, clicking and screeching at him with indignation.

He’s already out the other side of the room with some unknown cone of a child before he can think about exactly how terrible of an idea it would turn out to be.

 

* * *

 

“You _what?”_ Cor did not so much as blink when the hundred-thirteenth King of Lucis, Regis Lucis Caelum, nearly exploded. “I gave you this mission because I know your skill. I forget that you can be less than rational when there is an opportunity to fight so readily available.

“I kept a kid from getting murdered, Regis,” he summarized. Yes, it wasn’t _quite_ what had happened, but he wasn’t so picky about specifics as the Citadel management department’s reigning Scientia. It wasn’t exactly a lie, anyway. “Some guy came in- might have been a big-shot, but who’s counting -and killed them all.” Regis fixed him with a look of absolute resignation, the same one he’d been relegated to using around Cor since their days as a travelling whirlwind of teenagers, and raised a brow. “Except for this one,” he amended. “He’s the only one that guy wanted to keep.”

Clarus Amicita, sworn Shield to the King and longtime friend, was having none of it. “Cor Leonis, do you mean to tell me you thought it would be a great idea to adopt another child instead of just doing your sworn duty?”

“My duty is to the Crown,” Cor states. “It is not to inflict unnecessary harm to innocents. I may already have fucked up once, Clarus, but I don’t regret saving Prompto.” He didn’t mention exactly how the child in question had been barely even a year old when he’d been recovered, unlike the blank-slate ten-year-old he’d brought back, this time.

Regis closes his eyes and rubs at his forehead. “This wouldn’t be the first time we reprimand you, nor do I fear it will be the last, but you cannot care for this child. What Niflheim has done to him is unknown. We are in a very precarious position, Lieutenant general-“ Cor frowned at the obvious use of rank “-and, as much as I am loathe to say it, he must be kept in the appropriate facilities to protect both the boy and all of Insomnia.”

Cor wants to protest in some way, but he’s been by Regis’s side for far too long to know that the statement is an order and that the order itself is a necessity. “Yes, your majesty.”

Clarus huffs a laugh. “Not trying to be insubordinate? How unlike you. We thought you’d fight more than when you came in here with Prompto,” he jokes.

It had been a disaster, that. Cor ‘the Immortal’ Leonis, legend among the Crownsguard, toting a wide-eyed baby into the throne room while looking like he was on his way to kill the king, himself, instead of negotiate for the adoption of a stolen child.

“I can be,” he offered and Regis laughed.

“You’re dismissed, Lieutenant general. Thank you for your report.”

Cor bowed, pivoted on his heel, and left. He did not look back.

 

* * *

 

At exactly three o’ two in the afternoon, on the fifth of August, every window in the Citadel’s eleventh floor library explodes in tandem. It’s not a terrorist attack, or some usurper seeking for the death of the Crown. Simply a twelve-year-old boy with a debilitating fear of spiders.

He spots the little brown speck on the corner of an annoyingly shiny, white bookshelf and frowns. “Liberio, calm down.”

The child shakes his head with enough force the Marshall is distantly awed in the fact he doesn’t get whiplash from his own movements. He sits solidly atop a table, legs pulled up to his chest and eyes narrowed with all the rage he could possible muster (which was a _lot,_ if Cor had to be honest). “I _refuse!”_

“You blew out the windows,” he points out. “Just let me take care of it and you’ll be fine.” He takes a step toward the bug and Liberio shrieks, lightning burning fractal patterns into the centuries old table and curling the ends of his hair upward in a fashion not unlike that of a scared cat. Cor silently prays that Regis won’t use the ruined heirloom as a reason to rope him into filing all the reports he’d been skipping out on.

“You can’t! It’ll get on you!” The child skitters ever farther away, leaning a little too far back and falling off the table with an aborted scream.

Cor sighs, knocks the spider off the bookcase, and steps on it in short order. “It’s dead.”

“I told you not to kill it,” Liberio cries. “He wasn’t doing anything wrong!”

“Then, why is it that you blew out the windows?”

The child glares, petulant and grieving, voice wobbly like he was about to cry, “I wanted to help him get back outside!”

The Marshall groans, pinching the bridge of his nose. “And you couldn’t just call Monica to help you move it outside?”

“Him!”

“Fine,” he amends, _“him.”_

Liberio gives it a long thought, still laying on the ground with his feet kicked up on the table. “She’s busy. She’s _always_ busy. I thought you’d be _less_ busy and more _likely_ to help me move him outside!” He sniffles quietly. “I didn’t mean to do a bad thing, again. He scared me, is all… I thought it might work to put him outside through the window, but he’s _scary!”_

With all the power of a well and truly frustrated field Marshall, Cor Leonis calls on the only ally he knows can solve the problem: his own son, probably still working on making a particularly colorful rendition of a chocobo herd back in Cor’s office, Prompto.

He pulls out his phone and dials Monica. It rings twice before she picks up. _“This is the Crownsguard Executive Office. If you’re looking for the Marshall, he’s not in right now.”_

“Monica, it’s me. Lib’s having an issue. Can you ask Prompto if he’s done coloring?”

She laughs, voice a little tinny through the line when she agrees. _“Of course, Marshall. Do you need anything repaired?”_

In the span of two years, the entirety of the Citadel had met Liberio (or, rather, his train of destruction) at least once. He was hard to miss, a child with bright eyes and hair that was not unlike the color of a well-aged red wine, and even harder to forget. Most of the staff became acquainted with him when he caused an accidental power outage to the whole north quarter of Insomnia because of a lab test gone wrong. Or when he set half the facility on fire. Or froze himself into his room on accident because of a nightmare. He was the walking calamity of Insomnia more than Regis’s own wayward son.

“Yes. Eleventh floor, the library windows. Thank you, Monica.”

_“Anytime, Marshall.”_

The line closed with a click. Liberio rolled over and stared at the carpet. “You’re going to have to apologize to Rege-Reej-Reggie. King Reggie.”

Cor laughed, although it was more an exhale than a sound, and pointed out, “No. _You’re_ the one who needs to apologize to Regis.”

“Reggie sounds better. Easier. King Reggie sounds less intimidating, but infinitely more awesome.”

“Infinitely? That’s a new one,” he says. “Is Ignis helping you more than the prince?”

Liberio sits up with a start and shakes his head wildly all over again. “No! Iggy is helping Noct and I just listen in a little!” He straightens his shirt- a gift from Clarus he was all too fond of -and asks, “Do I look okay?”

“To see Regis right now? Questionable. Going with Prom to get a snack? Just fine.” Cor doesn’t bother mentioning how his leggings peek out from the bottoms of his pant-legs, seams obvious in their inverted state, or how his shirt is an all too casual number covered in metallic behemoths that clash with the myriad bright colors he likes to swath himself in. “Don’t worry about it, kid. Nobody cares what you wear, just that you don’t do shit like this on purpose.”

“I _don’t-“_

“I know you don’t, Lib,” Cor interjects, “but there are some people who-“

“Libby!” Prompto bounds into the room, almost eight years old and more than happy to show off the gaps in his teeth like badges of honor. He ignores the carnage of the half-destroyed library in favor of brandishing a piece of construction paper proudly in their direction. “Look!”

Cor squints a little, trying to focus on the picture while it’s being waved around in a frenzy. “Are those… chocobos?” The birds are all a bit lopsided, feathers varying patterns and shapes, but they look accurate enough to at least be discernable. Everything is done in a different color- the grass a bright pink, sun a startling lime green, each chocobo a different tone of purple -and he’s so proud of it that Cor can’t help but offer, “Want to put it on the fridge when we get home?”

Prompto beams in reply.

Liberio just wants to know what it would be like to put something up _anywhere_ in his room.

 

* * *

 

 

Liberio asks Prompto for a drawing, later that day. He says he wants to put it up at home and it’s not quite a lie, but his ‘home’ is a room in a lab he’s hated since he learned what that word meant. He hopes the colors against the white-on-white of room 475 might make him hate it a bit less. It just makes him bitter, instead.


	2. Chapter 2

At sixteen, Liberio is nothing if not a terror.

“You mean to tell me that putting not  _ one,  _ but  _ half the entire Glaive  _ out of commission was an  _ accident?” _

He shrugs and spins around in his chair, swaddled up to his chin in so many layers of black and grey he could pass for a particularly spirited pile of blankets. He stares at his superiors without fear, not even needing to take a glance at the nameplate sitting perilously close to the edge of the desk to know they were only waiting for one Titus Drautos to appear before the shitstorm of his most recent accident really intensified.

“Yep,” he said, popping the P like a bubble, “and they started it.”

“If you continue this sort of behavior, we will have to put you on probation,” Clarus warns. His face is lined with worry more than it ever has been before, eyes firmly on Liberio even while standing ever so slightly forward, just enough to make it known that he is ever the King’s shield, even if Regis is perched on the ancient wood of Drautos’s desk and swinging his feet like an impatient child.

Liberio huffs, shrinking down further into his clothes and lamenting the lack of an easy way out of the situation short of flinging himself from a window and hoping he’d take the eighteen story drop well enough to not die. Cor could do it, probably. He’s proven to be excessively good at being not-dead in fatal situations. It’s unlikely that ability was somehow translated over to Liberio, however, even if Cor  _ was  _ the one to bring him back to Insomnia and help raise him.

Regis stands before they even hear the click of the door handle and has drawn himself up into all the regality and severity befitting of his position. By the time Drautos sweeps into the room, all the reigning adults have gone from frustrated to a congregation of asperity.

“Hey, hey, Tits,” Liberio teases. “What’s got your panties in such a twist you’ve gathered even the  _ king?”  _ He grins in a way that’s mostly a baring of teeth instead of a show of goodwill. The look Drautos fixes him with doesn’t make him drop it– it’s a declaration of war against his superior for what’s probably the hundredth time since he’d been accepted into the Glaive.

“You,” the man replies.

Clarus shoots the teen a warning look.  _ “Well,  _ then, out with it. Tell me  _ everything  _ I’ve done oh-so wrong and then call the Marshall of the Crownsguard himself to dish out punishment because you know I don’t listen to you.” Liberio pulls his legs up and off the floor to fold them carelessly, boot soles leaving dirt all over the stupid patent leather upholstery. A little part of his mind wonders if the first Lucian kings were all emo guys with a leather fetish because nobody could say in good taste that their design and decoration choices were at all reasonable. He’s getting really tired of the perpetual black-and-silver coordination thing.

“Well, then, if you already know how this is going to work, I suggest you pack your bags and get out of the barracks,” Drautos commands. “You’re dismissed.”

“Come again?”

“I do not accept insubordination among my men. You ignored my final warning and are being permanently removed from the ranks of the Glaive.”

Liberio laughs, seriously contemplating the window plan, and just asks, “Hey, Tits, did you do the same thing for Nyx’s stunt last month, or did you only assign him to laundry duty because it lets him visit your bed, too?”

Drautos’s eyes narrow and that’s all the proof Liberio needs before laughing, loud and full-bodied, like it’s the most hilarious joke he’s made in years. He slaps the arm of his chair and hoots, miscellaneous scarves and necklaces falling into disarray nearly worse than that of his hair. It’s insulting, the complete lack of decorum he likes to display, but it’s less of an issue when he’s not beholden to the Crown.

Regis doesn’t move. He’s been suspiciously silent for someone who much prefers to set things in stone near immediately, even if only to allow him that second of relief before he has to attend to something else. When he clears his throat, Liberio and Drautos are nearly at each other’s throats from across a piece of well-worn wood. They stop trying to commit murder by expression alone only for fear of disappointing their king.

“Sorry, your Majesty,” and “My apologies, King Regis,” are said at the same time. Liberio glares at Drautos like he’s somehow been done a great disservice just by the man existing in the same universe as him.

Regis sighs and the weight of his disappointment nearly forces Liberio to look contrite, a direct hit to that which the boy strives to attain. “You know we cannot continue to make exceptions for you, young man,” Regis reminds. He does not smile, does not bother to soften the hard lines that have taken up residence around his eyes and brow from years upon years of relentless stress. “If, at this age, you are still behaving in such a manner, I have no choice but to continue to deny you both agency and goodwill.”

Liberio stands with a  _ thump _ , heavy soled boots the only thing on him that screams of his previous service to the Crown, and snaps, “So fucking  _ be  _ it. I’ll just go back to that excuse for a home and hope the PTSD makes you put me down sooner rather than later.” He’s not smiling in that feral way of his, anymore, as he stomps over to the door.

The moment his hand touches the gilded metal of the handle, it frosts over. The mechanism sticks and locks halfway through a turn. Liberio growls and then the door is half-singed and he’s blinking shadows from his vision as the handle turns all too easily, probably a little warped on the inside and still cooling off after being struck by the Citadel’s resident localized catastrophe.

He sweeps down the hall with unceremoniously and heads toward the stairs. Nobody ever uses the stairs unless they’re Clarus’s son on leg day. It’s blissfully empty, granting Liberio enough space to properly storm his way toward the Citadel gates without incapacitating another eighty-something warriors of the Crown.

The air heats enough to makes his necklaces feel like brands against his neck. There’s a shimmer in the air and the condensation from Insomnia’s mild summer evaporates from the outside of the windows as he passes. When he grits his teeth, flames manifest from nothing all along the ground, licking up his legs and curling up into the air before settling down again to wreath his feet and the lip of each step he passes before blinking out in neglect.

He’s three steps from the first floor’s landing when he decides it’s a good idea to look reasonably civil as an immigrant, non-Lucian teenager can be. He cools down, carefully shoving the mania of his magic to the back of his mind, and frowns. Would they even let him out of the Citadel after that?

He glances down the hall before stepping out from the landing, jogging down the hallway to pause just inside the main doors. There are always Crownguard stationed at any major through point, but Liberio is nothing if not inventive. He roots around in his pockets for any sort of metal component, coming across Luche’s stolen money clip. He plucks the money out and hefts the clip before darting out from his not-really-hiding spot and chucking it far as he can toward the gate guards.

He makes to initiate a warp, feeling the wash of familiar Lucian magic pulling at his body separate from his soul so it can fill in the spaces it’s hollowed out time and time again and yank him through time and space like a ragdoll, but it doesn’t quite come the way it should.

The blue turns a startling red, roaring and cracking with a primal energy that kicks Liberio from his spot to halfway across the courtyard faster than he’s ever been able to warp before. He scrambles to catch the clip before it’s too far from his wildly grasping hands, trying one more time to see if it was just a fluke.

The “between” he’s used to seeing before reemerging from a warp is gone too fast to see, or sense. It feels like a concentrated kick of magic to the gut, buzzing in the base of his neck and chilling him to the bone the same time it sets his skin aflame.

Liberio dissolves into the ether with a spray of crimson sparks. He does not resurface among those in service to the Crown until dawn.   


**Author's Note:**

> As always, I will beg for feedback! Anything you want to give will be hoarded like the gold it is! <3
> 
> Yell with me:  
> @ Tumblr: kiriami-sama  
> @ Twitter: FlamingAceKiri


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